Today is our lucky day! Normally we only hear from X Factor’s first winner Steve Brookstein once a year (around the time of the X Factor launch coincidentally) but he has saw fit to crawl out from under his rock this week to defend poor old Leon Jackson.

Leon was unceremoniously dumped by his record label this week and they didn’t even do him the favour of phoning to tell him. No, sad old Leon had to read the news in The Sun. Of course Steve Brookstein went through a similar ordeal back in 2005 so he decided to write in support of Leon on his own personal blog.

Brookstein blustered: “If they cared anything about Leon they would have announced his departure after his tour and not before it, they would have kept his fans informed, his website up-to-date, and not put comments from Simon into the press saying: ‘[He's a] nice guy but not gonna set the world on fire, Rhydian should have won’.”

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Former X Factor contestant Rowetta Satchell has admitted that most of the time she was on our screens she was out of her mind drunk.

Rowetta starred in the first series of the ITV show back in 2004 and admitted that the stress of placing herself in such a pressurised environment ended up with her drinking at least a bottle of whiskey a day.

Rowetta, 42, told The Sun: “I didn’t know what X Factor was going to be. It was the first series and the first show where there was no age limit so I went for it. I was so nervous waiting for my audition, I drank for four hours, so I was a mess. I don’t remember anything — all I know is that I really made a fool of myself.”

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